Saturday, June 29, 2013

China should accept McMahon line as border: Subramanian Swamy

Janata
Party President Subramanian Swamy has asked China to accept the McMahon Line as
the border with India just as it did in the case of Myanmar to resolve the
vexed dispute. China should accept McMahon Line since it had accepted the same
line drawn at the same time in 1912 with Myanmar, Swamy said while speaking on
"China's relations with its neighbours" at the 2013 World Peace Forum
organised by China's Tsinghua University in association with Chinese Foreign
Ministry. "Such an acceptance will vastly improve India-China
relations," Swamy argued in a lengthy paper presented at the meeting
attended by strategic think-tanks from China and a number of other countries.

"On the contrary for more than two-and-a-half
thousand years, India and China, two large neighbours and economic superpowers
by the then prevailing standards, have had good and peaceful relations based on
mutual respect and cultural exchanges, and in fact never had a single military
clash till 1962," he said. "Chinese grievance is that the border
delineated by British imperialists and colonialists and called the Sir Henry
McMahon Line was unfair to China, taking advantage of China's then weak
position," he said.

"Of course this is a contestable view,"
Swamy said. "The key question is what prompts today's China in regard to
Japan and India, to make a grievance of a long past historical injustice and unequal
treaties enforced by imperialists on a weak China, versus what makes China of
today to ignore such injustices in case of others such as in the now settled
China-Myanmar border dispute accepting the same McMahon Line" he said.